The intelligence agencies were given the authority to conduct warrantless wiretaps [AFP report] after the 9/11 attacks, but their existence was not known until 2005. The NSA's warrantless surveillance program has been harshly criticized since being disclosed by then-president George W. Bush. Last year, former DOJ attorney John Yoo defended [JURIST report] warrantless wiretapping practices in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) [text] as being obsolete and contributory in the government's failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. In April 2009, the DOJ announced that it had limited [JURIST report] the NSA's electronic surveillance, but maintained that the information being received was still important. In February of that year, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] denied an appeal by the DOJ seeking to stop a lawsuit [JURIST report] brought by an Islamic charity alleging it was the subject of an illegal NSA wiretap.

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